Entitled Down A Material Mouth, this year’s festival is programmed by artist Mark Briggs and writer Naomi Pearce, and includes screenings, performances and workshops with an emphasis on listening and liveness.

Down A Material Mouthis a collaboration prepared by strangers. In the beginning we spoke about festival fatigue; how best to avoid dry eyeballs, jelly brain, passive consumption. Suggested trying to give the senses a break by moving between listening and looking. Next we got into the voice, or to be more specific; artists and their polyvocal ability. Talked about how they digest pop culture, take music and sound, gorge on information, regurgitate. Are these casual encounters or intimate alliances? What things can’t be translated? Moving image work as indigestion. Decided to invite artists who used their own bodies as source material. Both thought humour was good (vital even) improvisation too. Soon the festival started to solidify. There would be a troubling of narrative storytelling, both in terms of its veracity but also its affect; how it manipulates and seduces, what it incites. There would be artists using their mouths to speak and sing. We asked each other questions: who gets to give voice to other people’s lives? What information about a person is important? Who is listening? Biography as fictional reconstruction and political gesture, a recuperative genre through which loss might be soothed or desire sated. And then suddenly we were finished, full up with feelings about avatars or alter-egos as coping mechanisms; because who really likes the sound of their own voice anyway?

– Mark Briggs and Naomi Pearce

Down A Material Mouth considers the quality and use of the voice as a tool which makes and unmakes worlds. It includes:

Mourning and desire in the recent films of Mathew Parkin, accompanied by a screening programme of peers and influences selected by the artist featuring Sadie Benning, Lucy Clout and Clare Charnley, Christopher Kirubi and Jaakko Pallasvuo.

Reflections on emotional contagion, labour and love through everyday media in the work of artist, Erica Scourti.

A performance essay by interdisciplinary artist, writer and musician Devin Kenny about Black hypervisibility and political disenfranchisement within the context of the United States. Kenny’s presentation will include a screening of Edward O. Bland’s 1959 documentary film, The Cry of Jazz.

An audio-visual tribute to the late American artist Gandalf Gavan, who in collaboration with Ronnie Bass created the fictional German pop band DAS (2009–14). Featuring music videos by artists Korakrit Arunanondchai, Ohad Meromi and Debo Eilers.

A collaborative workshop entitled Tone, Timbre, Texture: Material approaches to sound with moving image which will explore how materiality can be translated between moving-image and soundtrack, led by composer Richy Carey with artists Mark Bleakley and Lauren Gault. See ticket information to book a place.

A presentation of films, music and poetry by German artist Luzie Meyer, drawing on themes and forms of authority, the absurd, sadomasochism, and feminism.

A new collaborative video installation by Glasgow-based artists Amelia Bywater and Rebecca Wilcox, in which fragmented footage form documents of daily constraints, intimacies, reluctance and non-performativity.

The first screening in Scotland of The Moodies; an hour-long absurdist cabaret of pop, rock, and cocktail lounge numbers by this gender challenging performance art group, originally made for German television in 1974.

Tickets> Festival Pass £10/£8 (concessions and those on a low income)
> Day Pass £6/£5 (concessions and those on a low income)
> Tickets are free for carers/personal assistants/CEA card holders
> Tickets are available to purchase in person from Tramway Box Office. You can also call 0845 330 3501 or book online (transaction fee £3 online, £1.50 by phone).
> Book here for workshop: Tone, Timbre, Texture: Material approaches to sound with moving image
*Places for this workshop are limited and can only be booked with a festival or day pass for AMIF 2018.

LUX Scotland and Tramway are committed to increasing accessibility. If there is anything we can do to make it easier for you to attend AMIF 2018, or if you have any questions, thoughts or feedback around access at Tramway and for AMIF, please feel free contact Matilda Strang at LUX Scotland: matilda@lux.org.uk

Venue accessibilityFurther information about venue access at Tramway can be found here.

About AMIFLUX Scotland and Tramway’s annual Artists’ Moving Image Festival (AMIF) was established in 2012 to provide a platform for the discussion and presentation of artists’ moving image, showcasing forms of production and research alongside screenings and discursive events. AMIF 2018 is presented and produced as a collaboration between Tramway and LUX Scotland, funded by Creative Scotland as part of Tramway’s core programme with additional support from Film Hub Scotland, The Hope Scott Trust and The Goethe-Institut.